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Canadian Supreme Court Delivers Huge Win For Internet Privacy
An anonymous reader writes For the past several months, many Canadians have been debating
privacy reform, with the government moving forward on two bills
involving Internet surveillance and expanded voluntary, warrantless
disclosure of personal information. Today, the Supreme Court of
Canada entered the debate and completely changed the discussion,
issuing its long-awaited R.
v. Spencer decision, which examined the legality of voluntary
warrantless disclosure of basic subscriber information to law
enforcement. Michael Geist summarizes
the findings, noting that the unanimous decision included a
strong endorsement of Internet privacy, emphasizing the privacy
importance of subscriber information, the right to anonymity, and
the need for police to obtain a warrant for subscriber information
except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.
What if the company involved is in the USA
Think of the poor bureaucrats and how they will now actually have to prove that they have a reason for these invasive abuses. They blah blah about abducted children and whatnot but I am fairly sure that if they go into a judge and say "abducted child" that the judge will be pretty free with the information and might not even mind being woken up in the middle of the night. But if they say, "Hunting a journalist investigating the RCMP" that the judge will tell them to go to hell.
when the US demands Canada comply with 'international norms'.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
This whole situation assumes a government having access to and data-mining your online activities is inherently more dangerous than the same behavior by large, multinational, profit driven corporations.
Your post history(sorry) suggests you're American. Why do you feel like you have jack shit to say about how Canadian government works?
If nothing else it will make weed out the strong cases from the fishing expeditions. All citizens deserve privacy in the absence of any evidence of wrong doing. To know that we now have that gives one hope that the system is working to a degree.
Does Canada have a real way to stop the government from breaking its own laws? The US does not. And how will this effect information that flows internationally? Does a Canadian on vacation in Miami Beach who wants to connect to a Canadian ISP have any real hope of protection? Will criminals who live near the Canadian border cross the border to communicate?
I think you didn't read the GPs comment after the '...'.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Or maybe I was commenting on the inanity of the part before. Does that scenario seem plausible to you?
Just awesome to see the Canadian legal system still has its eyes open. Now the political/intelligence system has been in lockstep with the U.S. on the surveillance of everything/everyone program - but maybe there's hope up in the great north. I wish our (U.S.) legal system was so clear sighted on these issues.
what scenario ? that the government will ignore the SCoC and continue to do whatever it wants ?
This is meaningless.
...except in exigent circumstances or under a reasonable law.
Exigent : pressing; demanding.
Right, so law enforcement can twist that to any meaning they want.
It should be noted that not only do Canadian citizens have a Right of Privacy in the Canadian Constitution, but this overrides all agreements and treaties like the US-Canada Data Treaty so that US firms must ensure Canadians in their data have privacy as well.
Period.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
how about if everyone put a big black X in the No Vote box ?
Seems like standard procedure for the "accountable and transparent" Harper Government.
Sent from my PDP-11
Sudden outbreak of common sense...
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
There's no liberalism in the liberal party. And living in Ontario, it's a case of the big cities deciding "what big city projects they want us rural folks to pay for." Never mind that ontario has a per person debt higher than california.
In order to help you see what 10 years of liberal policies have brought us I give you this list:
- The EHealth scandal
- The slush fund scandal
- The lottery corp scandals
- The CancerCare scandal
- The MPAC scandal
- The Children's Aid scandal
- The hospital consultants scandal
- The Niagara Parks Commission scandal
- The tire tax
- The electronics tax
- The cheap beer surtax
- The hidden hydro tax
- The hidden gas tax
- The 'smart meter' tax
- The 'Eco' tax
- No reduction in HST despite $4.3 Billion from the feds
- The forcing of WSIB on all construction owners
- The staggering increase in the Sunshine List
- The failure at Caledonia
- Selling out to the teachers & civic unions
- The blatant Nanticoke lie
- The squandering of record revenues
- The nanny-state banning of nearly everything
- The public funding of sex-changes while de-listing eye exams phsyio & chiro
- The billion-dollar-per-year burden of Family Day
- The billion-dollar flip-flop on The Oakville gas plant
- Saddling rate-payers with billions in subsidies to Samsung & Ikea
- The Ombudsman/Auditor-General condemnations
- Turning Hydro into a luxury for the rich
- The by-election briberies
- The refusal to correct foreign ownership of our beer market
- The outrageous property assessments
- The stifling of private health services
- The illegal and unconstitutional secret G20 law
- The acceptance of garbage-striker extortion
- The harassing labour inspectors
- The idiotic preoccupation with homosexuality lessons for third-graders
- Dumping the blue box program onto small businesses
- Imposing blood alcohol rules that punish the innocent
- The $58 Million 'severance' to tax-collectors who didn't miss a single day's work
- Socialized daycare
- Canceling the 'mandatory' LHIN review & giving their CEO's$15000 raises
- The failure at Caledonia
- Sneaking tax-dollars into Liberals campaign team coffers
- Raising tuition & auto insurance to highest in Canada
- Sinking Ontario into Have-Not status.
- ORNGE
- Gas Plants
- Pan Am Games budget overruns
- Ontario Northland Railway
- OPG pension scandal and deficit
Om, nomnomnom...
While I've never voted in an Ontario election (since I live in Quebec), I've never seen a "no vote" option on any ballot in Canada, be it federal, provincial, or municipal.
Rather than mark your ballot, you have to go to the polling station personnel, and tell them that you decline your vote. That is treated differently than a spoiled ballot.
This is an important decision for both Canada and the US. The current government has two bills (proposed laws) in front of Parliamentary committees this week where, over the consistent objections of the Canadian privacy community, they planned to _expand_ warrantless searches. And then this decision comes along - thank heavens - and our Supreme Court says that there has to be a subpoena, or a reasonable law, before the right to anonymity - get that, the right to anonymity!- can be overridden. The 'reasonable' law bit is a shot directed right at the current government. The Senate committee dealing with one of these bills has already said it will have to review their approval of the bill. No one thinks that the police won't have some kind of lawful access - but reasonable for us has always meant with judicial oversight, and transparency - and that there is accountability for making these requests for personal information. This decision is important for Canadians, because it pulls us back from the surveillance state our current government has been building.
At the minimum, it is going to make the True North a great place for Americans to host their data - we have the competitive advantage when it comes to privacy. If we are really lucky, it may remind the US about this fantastic document, something inspiring to the whole world, called the Bill of Rights, and which recent US governments have been happy to ignore. Perhaps your neighbour to the north can remind you of what you were always supposed to be about...
So this helps out like, 15 people?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
More transparency into government and business would, I think, have a lot more benefits than incrementally regaining a little privacy.
Looks like that's only allowed in a handful of provinces (including Ontario), not in the majority of the provinces or federal elections. It also seems a pretty useless option.
The truth is all politicians are shit and the longer they're in power the worse they become.
That's not really true, a good politician remembers the people that they're working for. I live in Oxford county(between London and Kitchener Waterloo aka K/W), our MP's are usually in power for a decade+ but remain on good standing with the community with an open-door policy which keeps them extremely popular. I've had my fair share of problems, which Hardeman(previously was the mayor of SW-Oxford same policy.) has helped me with and I know quite a few others who've gotten a hand as well. We're rural, and he's as popular in the cities(Woodstock, Ingersoll, Tillsonburg, etc) as he is in the country. The same held true of Southerland, and Tatham.
Personally I believe the problem lies when a MP or MPP forget who they're employed by and would rather listen to special interests instead of the people who elected them. A down-to-earth politician is as rare as a moose in a city.
Om, nomnomnom...
The cities are vastly more productive than rural areas, so they're already subsidizing the rest of the province. Toronto by itself is responsible for a huge part of the entire country's GDP. Improving public transit for these cities (where an increasingly large number of voters live) seemed like a better use of public money than yet another corporate tax cut, which is why Ontario voted as it did.
I couldn't 't vote Liberal personally, as I felt the party should be punished for its ethical lapses, but I understand why the voters rejected Tim Hudak's glorious right-wing revolution. If the Conservatives remember that this is centrist province and smarten up they will have a chance next time around.
The map is not the territory.
There is a big, BIG difference between "no such thing as privacy" and "recording your every move 24/7 and then analyzing the hell out of it"
That was extreme sarcasm in case anyone missed it.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The cities are vastly more productive than rural areas, so they're already subsidizing the rest of the province.
Want to make a bet? Back before the liberals managed to screw over the province, Oxford County was responsible for 6% of the provinces GDP. The population at the time was 131k people, what Ontario needed was the liberals to be tossed out of office for breaking the rule of law, then thrown in jail as an example.
But voters didn't reject a "right-wing revolution" they rejected hudak for being unlikeable. Even the various canadian right-wing sites disliked him. Ontario isn't a centerist province, go look at your electoral map. The majority except for the cities are right-wing, the cities are predominantly left-wing.
Om, nomnomnom...
People make fun of California and talk about them teetering on bankruptcy. But they look positively peachy compared to California. Granted this is from a right wing think tank, but the truth is the truth. And the new liberal government's budget proposals promise to run 10+ billion dollar deficits per year for the following several years. Ontario is doomed. It is the last place anyone would want to go now.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
This is a ruling I think we all wanted, that the release of traceable information related to a known customer IP is a breach of reasonable privacy. Reading further though in the above case, is to note that the ruling does not preclude evidence gathered in this way from being later used in court.
You see in Canada there is a prosecution plea of "In good faith" that can often allow bad evidence to be used in court under a judges discretion, or in the case where it is an appeal used in a later retrial.
Sure, I absolutely am willing to bet that cities bring more economic activity into the province than the rural areas do. The presence of one wealthy exurb does not change that. The fact is that the big cities, Toronto in particular, bring a large benefit to everyone in the province.
Also, the electoral map is misleading for two reasons: one the much larger size of rural, conservative ridings and the winner-takes-all nature of our elections. If you look at the map you sea a mainly blue southern Ontario, large patches of orange in the north, and a few tiny specks of red in certain areas. Remember that its the number of seats that matter in our system, not the surface area of the riding. The cities have many ridings because of their population. The northwest most riding in our province, where Kenora is, is bigger than all of southern Ontario, yet they only elect one MPP. The other thing is that there is a fair number of voters for all parties in every riding, but small tendancies towards Liberal or Convservative have a big impact. Its ridiculous to paint either the cities or the rural areas as politically unified when most winning candidates get less than half the vote.
The map is not the territory.
Honestly... I don't believe there is a really good choice ... but the NDP has never thrown historical documents in the dumpster (to the best of my knowledge) and (at least in theory) they are the working man's party ... so if I were voting in a Canadian election and the candidate wasn't obviously a tool I'd vote that way ... otherwise it would be a No Vote ballot..